Greetings, fellow Kindred! Cold creeps in and the year draws to a close, so you may be wondering… what do we have for you? Well, do you like drinking bourbon in your casino suite, as you gaze down at a sea of chumps ready to be manipulated, feathers plucked out and pockets emptied? Do you lurk in the dark alleys of the underworld, an urban legend, compelling lone passerby to unspeakable acts of violence and madness? That’s right! We’re closing out the cycle with Dominate.

Dominate is not about making friends, it’s about making thralls. Through a short quest line, you can get to know select NPCs around the world and, if you play your cards right, induct them into a world of darkness as your personal Ghouls. These are not your unremarkable Janes and Johns in the way Blood Dolls are, but rather complex characters with dreams and aspirations, and your cold-blooded heart may choose to befriend them or subjugate them completely.

Our goal is to explore themes of codependent behavior, abuse, manipulation and obsession with these hapless puppies, so we hope to give the player the tools they need to express their character as they wish and to recruit at least one Ghoul during every playthrough. Ghouls will not be tied to Dominate, but the tree will greatly support them and unlock their full potential.

As a complement to Ghouls, the tree offers two distinct passives: Compel and Cloud Memory. With Compel, your Ghoul is able to act in battle as an extra Coterie member; Cloud Memory is just a quirky passive that allows you to feed and perform other actions without raising Notoriety. 

As mentioned before, Dominate is not required for Ghoul gameplay, but it greatly enhances it. By progressing through the tree you will unlock different tiers of the Errands board, which allows you to send your Ghouls out on missions.

Errands are meant to be one of the most lucrative opportunities for cash, gear, weapons and consumables. It’s not all cream and berries however: your Ghouls will get bruised and dented, and sending them out while exhausted or injured will eventually make them question their life choices and, well… leave you. It is indeed possible to lose your Ghoul due to poor management (just like I “lost” all those Tamagochis ages ago because I forgot to feed them), which might mean they just leave you to your own devices; or, they become vindictive and decide to make things difficult for you throughout the game, even swearing allegiance to other Kindred and eventually fighting you.

Ghouls may be the star of the tree, but that doesn’t mean other aspects get neglected. There are questionable and even gruesome things you can do to your Dolls for example: Red Herring lets you set a Doll loose and start spreading false information about you and your Haven, reducing your Notoriety and even the amount of troops you will fight in upcoming battles. But if you want to take it one step further… Tabula Rasa will wipe out memories and cognitive functions of a Doll, making them unable to leave anymore and stay at your side as an unresponsive mannequin/blood reserve. While advantageous, their unsettling demeanor will spook your other guests out, meaning other Dolls might leave quicker and Ghouls will get angrier more rapidly.

If ruining people’s lives is not your thing, there’s always a more friendly route. Silver Tongue Devil lets you talk your way out of some altercations, and Twenty One lets you cheat at casino games and reap additional rewards… if you don’t mind getting kicked out (or worse) if you do it too much.

What about combat? Dominate is not inherently a combat spec (for us, at least) but there are some interesting and unique combat options available. The tree caps out at Terminal Decree, an ability that spends all Blood available to mind control a single non-boss enemy: after the duration ends, the target will “take care of things”(as portrayed in the lore), making it the most powerful mind control in the game. If you use the skill on a boss enemy, the user will instead deal massive damage proportional to the amount of Blood stored.

There is another interesting choice in Dementation. In combat, it’s mostly another source of Panic/Frenzy, but we’ve decided to add some flavor speech bubbles to it (IT’S SCRATCHING MY EYES, PLEASE GET IT OUT OF MY EYES). In conversations, it’s one of the 2 sources of insanity dialog in the game, much like Malkavian text was in the original VTMB.

We hope Dominate will provide ample opportunities to explore the darker side of the vampire mind. As always, your feedback is more than welcome! From the team and straight from the heart, we hope you have a happy holiday season in the company of your loved ones, and here’s a bloody toast for more things to come.